The more Donald Trump's war of choice goes on, the worse things get for him. And even if the war were to be wrapped up inside of a week, the aftereffects are going to stick around for a long time to come -- meaning things probably won't improve for Trump in time to have much political effect on the midterm elections. Whenever a peace deal is reached, it will probably bear a striking resemblance to the deal Barack Obama had in place with Iran that Trump tore up during his first term in office. These are the conclusions it is now impossible to escape.

The war with Iran has hit a stalemate, for the moment. Neither side is willing to even hold talks, and little progress seems to be happening on the diplomatic front at all. Meanwhile, both sides have decided that actually seizing ships (oil tankers and cargo ships) is the smartest thing to do right now. Thus, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed and the blockade on Iran's ports remains in force. At this point -- since missiles and bombs aren't flying anymore due to Trump extending the ceasefire indefinitely -- interfering with shipping is the main military strategy for both sides.

Trump, at the outset of what he liked to call (at least at the beginning) "a little excursion" into Iran, predicted that the whole war would take "four or five weeks." We are now at the end of Week 8, with no clear end in sight. And the American public has already soured on the war in a big way.

They've soured on Trump as well. His job approval ratings now seem to be in freefall, as he hits new lows for his second term. This means Trump is losing support among people who have supported him up until now -- throughout his entire first year in office.

RealClearPolitics, which has a tendency to attempt to skew the data in a direction that benefits conservatives, has Trump down 17.2 points, with his job approval rating at 40.5 percent and his disapproval at 57.7 percent. However, to achieve this, they awkwardly shifted which polls they include in their rolling average of all polls to cut off one that was particularly bad for Trump -- an NBC Decision Desk poll that had Trump at only 37 percent approval to 63 percent disapproval. This poll isn't even two weeks old, but was cut off from the RealClearPolitics average. If it had been included, Trump would now be 17.8 percent below water. Either way, it's the biggest gap he's charted since his second term began.

Other poll-of-polls aggregators have Trump even lower. FiftyPlusOne has him down by a whopping 21.9 percent (37.1 to 59.0), the New York Times has him down 19 points (39 to 58), and Nate Silver has Trump 18.8 points below water (39.0 to 57.8). If we take a "poll of polls-of-polls" average, it comes to Trump being 19.2 percent down, at 38.9 percent approval to 58.1 percent disapproval.

Of course, these being averages, some individual polls have Trump much worse off. The Associated Press released a new poll this week that had Trump at worse than 2-to-1 against (33 percent approval to 67 percent disapproval). That's pretty dismal territory for any president to be in.

It gets even worse for Trump when you look at the issue of inflation. Nate Silver has Trump at a whopping 40.4 points underwater on inflation, with only 28.4 percent approval and 68.4 disapproval. High gas prices are (no doubt) a huge factor in this.

The nationwide average of the price of a gallon of gasoline began the year at roughly $2.75 a gallon. After Trump began his war of choice, that price spiked over a dollar (from where it was just before the shooting started). It hit a highpoint of $4.17 per gallon, but in the past two weeks it had begun to slowly slide back down again. Four days ago the average was down to $3.98, which is at least below the psychological mark of "four bucks a gallon." But since the diplomatic negotiations fell apart, the price has been rising once again (it is, as of this writing, at $4.03 a gallon). The price of a barrel of oil on the world market has risen back above $100 as well.

Team Trump is finally admitting what has been pretty obvious for a while now -- these prices aren't going to magically come all the way back down overnight when a peace deal is signed. Up until this week, Trump officials were employing a political strategy known by the technical name "blowing sunshine up the public's skirt" (there is a male equivalent that ends with: "...and telling you it's raining," but it is cruder, so we went with the female version instead). They have been insisting up until very recently that gas prices would come down within mere weeks of the war's end. Last weekend, though, Energy Secretary Chris Wright admitted during an interview that gas prices could very easily stay above $3 per gallon until 2027. Now -- especially in congressional hearings where they are testifying under oath -- cabinet members are refusing to even make any predictions.

The Pentagon held a classified briefing on Capitol Hill this week, and reportedly told the members that clearing the Strait of Hormuz of all Iranian mines could take as long as six months. And even that is dependent on the war actually ending before the minesweeping can begin in a big way. Shipping in the Strait won't even begin to return to anything approaching normal until all those mines are cleared and insurers are willing to insure ships transiting the Strait again.

The midterm elections are just over six months away, as the article points out:

Beyond any economic ramifications, such an outcome also could have significant implications politically in the United States -- particularly for Republicans -- as November's midterm elections draw near. President Donald Trump's decision to start the war has proved unpopular with most Americans, recent polls have shown, and it has fractured his political base, which voted him into office based in part on his repeated promises to avoid foreign military entanglements and focus more on domestic issues.

Pretty much no matter how you look at it, the longer this war drags on the worse it is going to get for Donald Trump (and, by extension, his fellow Republicans). And for what? People are beginning to notice that the peace deals under discussion bear a striking resemblance to the deal with Iran negotiated by Barack Obama -- the one that Donald Trump ripped up during his first term in office:

Billions in frozen assets may be handed back to Iran. Agreements to limit Tehran's nuclear program may eventually expire. And some of the same hard-line leaders who crushed nationwide protests in January could end up better-resourced than they were before President Donald Trump unleashed crushing airstrikes more than seven weeks ago.

After a decade of fiercely attacking a previous deal with Iran, Trump, pursuing a way out of a war he launched, has authorized U.S. negotiators to consider a bargain that involves many of the same trade-offs one of his predecessors confronted.

Though talks appear paused for now following Trump's decision on Tuesday to extend the ceasefire indefinitely while Iran comes up with a "unified proposal," the president will likely face the same challenges no matter when negotiators eventually sit down with each other.

In fact, what Trump may wind up agreeing to could be much worse than Obama's deal, in key respects that Trump has long denounced:

Trump and other Republican critics of that 2015 deal have spent the past decade blasting it for handing "pallets of cash" to Iran -- a reference to $1.7 billion that the Obama administration agreed to send to Tehran that was the resolution of a decades-old business dispute. Obama administration officials later acknowledged they hoped the money would ensure the Iranians held to their side of the bargain. Trump pulled the United States out of the agreement in 2018.

Now, the Trump administration is floating the possibility of unfreezing $20 billion -- in part proceeds from Iranian oil sales that sanctions have locked up in banks around the world. The money would be a bargaining chip to secure Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium. But other elements of the deal are still in question -- including points that unsettle some of those who criticized the earlier agreement.

There are a lot of contenders for the dubious prize of "most pointless war America has ever fought." Pretty much every modern war we've been in back to Korea would at least be on the list of contenders for that prize, vying with historic blunders such as the War of 1812. Donald Trump's war of choice with Iran is now high on that ignominious list. Trump is destroying his political standing and the chances of his party to regain control of Congress in the midterms, he looks small on the world stage as a much-reduced military force (what's left of it) proves it can still hold the might of the United States at bay, and whatever deal he eventually agrees to will be pretty much the same as the deal he tore up in a hissy fit during his first term. Trump never bothered to get the support of our allies in the rest of the world, leaving him alone to try to figure out an exit strategy. Trump also never bothered to convince the American public of his reasons for starting the war, and now we are all paying a big price for this misadventure, every time Americans fill their cars up. That's all pretty pointless, you've got to admit.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant